Population Dynamics During the Classic and Postclassic Period Maya in the Northern Maya Lowlands: The Analysis of Dental Morphological Traits

Abstract

This chapter uses dental morphology to reconstruct population dynamics, biodistance and populations’ inner variability in 18 human dental collections from Classic and Postclassic Maya sites in the northern and southern Maya Lowlands. Biodistance analyses show that inland sites in the Peten tend to aggregate with inland sites in the Chenes region, while coastal sites and those in the northern part of the Yucatan peninsula tend to cluster together. Interestingly, costal sites in the Classic and Postclassic gather together, suggesting population continuity in the peninsula and that a common dental morphological structure that would characterize the coastal sites had already started being shaped in the Classic and would continue in the later period. As regards inner variability, results indicate that larger cities (as for example Calakmul) or collections located in crucial trade corridors present higher levels of dental morphological variability in comparison with other sites that were less involved in extensive, long-distance trade exchanges.KeywordsDental morphologyPopulation variabilityClassicPostclassicMaya